Mama Kin, known for its live music and good eats, is closing after about two years in downtown San Jose.
The restaurant, which offered Cajun appetizers and entrees along with craft cocktails named for dead rock and jazz stars, announced the closure in an Instagram post on Monday. The post garnered more than 2,000 likes and dozens of comments mourning the closure and wishing owner Andrew Saman well.
Saman did not respond to requests for comment.
Saman took over the space after the former occupant, Cafe Stritch, closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. He previously told San José Spotlight he thought Cafe Stritch centered San Jose’s culture, and sought to continue bringing people together around the arts through Mama Kin.
“Hopefully there’s a brave soul willing to continue the fight to keep the Arts alive in this iconic building,” the Instagram post reads. “Arts are the true language of an authentic humanity. To the warriors of heart the world needs you now more than ever.”
Mama Kin was part of a wave of new small businesses bringing life back to downtown San Jose, which was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shelter-in-place mandates left businesses with little foot traffic, and many long-time businesses shuttered.
The city has been looking for ways to support downtown businesses as the area rebuilds, including closing San Pedro Square and Post Street to make pedestrian malls, and hosting more events in the area. These efforts have seen some success, according to Alex Stettinski, CEO of the San Jose Downtown Association, who said foot traffic downtown has been nearing pre-pandemic levels in the past few years.
“Mama Kin closing is sad, I’m not happy about it, I’m sad they’re leaving. That said, businesses closing is a dynamic factor of any market,” Stettinski told San José Spotlight. “We have so much going on in vibrancy that I’m not worried at all when it comes to numbers or when it comes to the trends in our downtown.”
Stettinski said more people are returning to downtown, pointing out foot traffic during the evenings and weekends has exceeded pre-pandemic numbers.
The downtown association measures foot traffic using a tool that tracks cell phone movement. It doesn’t have granular data, but can show larger trends. He said about 20.6 million people passed through the downtown in 2024, up from 19.4 million in 2023. That’s getting closer to the 2019 number of approximately 22.9 million people, he added.
San Jose Downtown Business Manager Nathan Donato-Weinstein said he isn’t sure what factors led to Mama Kin closing, and emphasized every business has different circumstances.
“In the last year, we’ve definitely had more openings than closings,” Donato-Weinstein told San José Spotlight. “I think we’ve made progress on the ground floor but, yeah, sometimes there’s turnover and it hurts for sure.”
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X.
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